We Can Achieve More Together

Smlednik is a village located on the right bank of the river Sava in the municipality of Medvode. The municipality, also called the green door to the capital, is home to four primary schools. Named after a poet from the Sora fields, our Simon Jenko Smlednik primary school is the youngest among them. The school district encompasses the villages of Smlednik, Valburga, Moše, Dragoèajna, Hraše, and a part of Zbilje. We have 237 pupils, the largest number in the two-hundred year history of the school. The smallness was one of the main advantages during the research project investigating the school's history and during the making of a collection of papers celebrating the 200th anniversary of the school's founding. The collection, titled ''School, in itself, is a good thing...«, was published in December 2015. Teachers, pupils, inhabitants of the surrounding villages, and history experts all came together to work on a two-year project that ended with an exhibition of photographs of the school building and its students and teachers, an exhibitions of old items related to school, and the publishing of the collection of papers. The abstract will present the cooperation of the school and the town regarding the collecting and editing of the physical, archival, written and photographic material, as well as regarding the organisation of many athletic and cultural activities connected to the anniversary. By investigating our school's history, we have encouraged students, teachers, parents, and locals to engage in research activities. In addition to that, we have built on intergenerational cooperation, linked the knowledge of local history to study materials, and strengthened the awareness of our identity. We put the same value on every contribution to the project, be it the student who brought his father's old comic book to the exhibtion, or the director of the school museum with his scientific paper. All of us have contributed to the best of our abilities. We behaved as a small museum or archive; collecting, editing and preserving items of historical importance, such as various documents and memories tied to our school. The number of people in attendance at the final ceremony speaks to the fact that we have managed to connect the school with both research institutions and the local community.